


i'll spend my whole life (working) with you

by pintobean82



Series: build this park with me (and maybe a life too) [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 22:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19327279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pintobean82/pseuds/pintobean82
Summary: Scott wants a park, but not as much as he wants her.orA Parks & Rec AU





	i'll spend my whole life (working) with you

Tessa honestly doesn’t know why she’s surprised when Scott Moir walks into the sponsor meeting. He’s maybe the biggest control freak she’s ever met. Even weirder about government work than Marie is about exercise. 

Not even the flu is going to keep him away from what she knows is the biggest project of his career so far.

What  _ does  _ surprise her is the fact that he’s wearing his sweater backwards and his tie is not under it or his collar, it’s just tied around his neck, hanging there,, and no one on the way to here from the hospital stopped him.

“Ah, Tessa!” he says when he spots her. “What a surprise to have you here. How was your flight in? Did you bring the minister?”

“Scott, I’m giving the presentation. And I’ve lived here for months. You’re really out of it. How are you feeling? Do you still have a fever?”

He frowns, obviously confused. She can’t help but be endeared. “I’m feeling great! Chiddy gave me one dose of flu medicine and as luck would have it, Kaet, Trent, and Marie-France were all kind enough to give me theirs.”

Kind enough? Yeah right, he definitely took without anyone knowing.

“Okay, so you are definitely high right now. Sit Scott.” He complies, following her to one of the benches outside the meeting room. She tries to smile at some older men as they walk into the room. If she’s learned anything in life, it’s that a smile can go a long way, and they need as many sponsors as possible.

Tessa crouches down in front of him. His eyes are all glassy and unfocused and he gives her a dopey smile, before his eyes start to wander behind her. How the hell he’s going to get through a presentation while high and sick is beyond her.

“Scott, hey Scott,” she says, snapping her fingers in front of his face to try and regain his attention.

“Sorry, there’s a monkey over on that wall and it wants me to see it’s forest.”

Oh for fucks sake. Charlie is still nowhere to be found since he disappeared this morning and she can’t babysit Scott, give a presentation, and try to keep Scott from giving the presentation by herself.

“We need to get you back to the hospital. You should be asleep and under supervision probably.”

His brow immediately furrows. “No, Tess, I have to be here.”

She tries not to think too much about him calling her something other than Tessa or Ms. Virtue for the first time. The way it rolls right off his tongue. “You’re really out of it, I don’t know how you think you’re going to do this. I spent all morning memorizing what you wanted me to and I know the numbers. I can handle this.”

He sighs. “Look, I know you can,” he says, surprisingly lucid. “But this is my project and I want to be here from start to finish, every step of the way. I need to see this through.”

She studies his face and he looks so serious. It’s not like she’s his mother and can stop him from doing this anyways. If he wants to, he can. She can always step in if he starts to get weird, and hopefully Charlie will show up to also help smooth things over.

She huffs. “Fine, but let’s fix you up. You can’t go in looking like this.”

She hooks her hands under the hem of his sweater and lifts her eyes to his, raising her eyebrows to ask permission. He nods and lifts his arms, so she can pull it over his head. 

“You just want to get me out of my clothes,” he mumbles, right as she can see his face again.

Her face flushes, and, okay, it’s not like she hasn’t thought of what he looks like under all his collared shirts and nice pants, but she certainly would never tell him that. And not just because he’s tripping on flu medicine.

So she ignores him, counting on the fact that he absolutely will not remember this later. Tessa gets to work on fixing his tie, the gesture oddly intimate, yet comfortable, like she’s done it for him a thousand times.

He just keeps staring at her, humming a soft tune, with a small smile on his face. She straightens the collar over the tie and then smooths out the shirt, running her hands over his shoulders, trying not to think about the muscles she can feel under her hands. She pulls away quickly when she realizes she’s been lingering too long and hands him his sweater to put back on.

“C’mon, we start in three minutes.” She hauls him up as best she can and leads him into the room. She’s got one hand wrapped around his bicep so he doesn’t stumble or crash into anything.

They make it to the front and she sits him down in a chair, so he can rest until he has to get up and talk. “Do you want water or anything?” she asks him.

“Some more flu medicine, if you’ve got it, would really hit the spot.”

She laughs, even though she doesn’t really think he’s with it enough to be joking.

Tessa turns around to assess the turnout and sees Charlie walking through the door, and the woman she’s pretty sure is Tanith right behind him. She’s been to her ice cream shop a few times and Charlie talks about her constantly. He smiles at Tanith when she takes a seat in the front row and bounds up to her and Scott.

“Hey Charlie, nice of you to show up. Did you have a good day flirting and eating ice cream?”

“Actually I did. Tanith is trying out new flavors right now and they were all delicious.”

Tessa glares at him. “Well it was super fun for me working on this meeting all by myself.”

“I was working! Tanith agreed to sponsor us and wants a booth at the Winter Carnival. She also said she’d work on getting the Small Business Block to agree too.”

And, okay, she has to give him credit, that’s actually a big deal. The Small Business Block was really just a neighborhood block full of small businesses. But according to Scott, they had a lot of pull and influence in the town. The exact way he had described it was, ‘Imagine if the popular girls from Mean Girls all grew up, started businesses right next door to each other, and then formed a business society.’ He had told her that if they could get even just one to agree, the rest would surely follow, along with all the other businesses in town that wanted the SBB’s stamp of approval.

She concedes, “Well, good job then, but you could’ve at least told me what you were doing.”

Charlie laughs. “Now where’s the fun in that?” His eyebrows suddenly scrunch together as he looks over her shoulder, seemingly noticing Scott for the first time. “I thought you brought him to the hospital?” he asks.

“I did. He made an escape and came here instead.”

“Checks out. When he had his appendix removed four years ago, he came to help with park clean up three hours after he got out of surgery. Said it was too important to miss.” 

“And it was! Without me there you would’ve never noticed the pile of beer cans under the slide,” Scott says from behind her.

Charlie snorts. “Sure thing boss. Ready to get this started!” he says, bounding up the stairs to the podium and microphone.

“Scott, you really don’t have to do this,” she tries to tell him as he stands up and sways on his feet.

“Not your call,” he tells her, pointing his finger in her general direction, but missing by a few inches. His eyesight must be going now too.

Tessa holds her breath as she watches him cautiously make his way up the stairs after Charlie’s introduction. She only releases the tension in her shoulders when he’s standing at the podium, hands clutching the sides to stay upright. She has half a mind to just follow him up there and stand at his side in case he starts tipping over.

Scott takes a deep breath, while looking at his notes, before he lifts his head and begins.

“Thank you all for being here. You are joining the start of something great and just by showing up today, you’ve cemented your place in this town’s history of excellence.” He continues on like he’s never been sick a day in his life, like he slept eight hours the night before, had a well balanced breakfast, ran before work, spent the day in a spa. Not spent the last twelve hours throwing up and then getting high on flu medicine.

Scott Moir in action is a beautiful thing to witness.

She spends the next fifteen minutes listening to him detail the Winter Carnival, pointing out the benefits of small business involvement, being a sponsor, the success and publicity and increased sales businesses had the last time the carnival was held, seventeen years ago. It’s incredible, the knowledge he has of his own town’s history, with the carnival, business endeavors, and finances, things you wouldn’t know unless it was your area of work or expertise. But Scott just knows it all.

And if she wasn’t working with him on this project, if she was a small business owner, she knows she would be drawn in by his passion and love for the Carnival and town. This is going to be a success, she can just feel it. And it’s all because of him.

Things start to head a little south when he finishes his prepared speech and people start asking questions. It’s obvious, at least to her, that he doesn’t get what people are saying and has clearly started to hallucinate again, but Charlie is quick to get him off stage and she steps in to field questions for him.

The rest of the meeting flies by in a whirl of success. Charlie has already left to take Scott back to the hospital, so she sticks around to watch people fill out the sign up sheet and trickle out of the room.

The number of businesses that agree to both sponsor and participate is incredible. They were hoping for fifty six, and they’ve bagged seventy eight so far. There are still so many other shops and restaurants that could hear the buzz and want to participate. She can’t wait to tell Scott.

But it’s late and she’s tired and hungry, she can wait to tell him tomorrow. Maybe she’ll visit him at the hospital and bring him some soup or something as a Get Well Soon gesture. She resolutely decides not to think about how the thought of seeing him so happy about the news gives her butterflies and makes her feel warm all over.

She’s just staying to see this project through. It’s not like it’s going to turn into anything more than that. No matter how knowledgeable, charming, funny, handsome, passionate, or sweet he may be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is based on the show Parks&Rec, which if you haven't watched, you definitely should!!


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